The laws of giv­ing tzedakah are an essen­tial part of Jew­ish edu­ca­tion. In More Than Enough, Richard Michel­son and Joe Cepe­da con­dense the core part of Maimonides’s famous lad­der of giv­ing, in which the great philoso­pher enu­mer­at­ed, from the least to the most effec­tive, an eth­i­cal path to help­ing those in need. Repeat­ing vari­a­tions on the refrains ​“lit­tle enough is more than enough,” and ​“feels bet­ter to help than to need help,” the book encour­ages an impor­tant mitzvah.

The set­ting is a mul­ti­cul­tur­al neigh­bor­hood where eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty is com­mon. No one in the sto­ry is afflu­ent, includ­ing Moses, a boy who is on a shoe-shop­ping errand with his moth­er. When Bare­foot Ben­ny shakes his cup, ask­ing for spare change, Moses is embar­rassed and looks away. Michel­son acknowl­edges the dis­com­fort that chil­dren and adults, may feel when con­front­ed with the painful real­i­ty of pover­ty. Moses’s moth­er does not judge his feel­ings, but instead explains that ignor­ing some­one reduced to beg­ging is not an option, even if Moses’s own choice of new high tops may now be limited.

Encoun­ters with more neigh­bors for whom times are tough are com­ple­ment­ed by evi­dence that even a small ges­ture can bring change. Ben­ny, no longer bare­foot, now has a job as a bar­ber, where he extends the same help­ing hand to Big Jim, who also finds employ­ment. Assis­tance can take oth­er forms than out­right gifts of mon­ey, as Mai­monides made clear. When Ms. Brown needs child­care in order to attend an inter­view, Moses insists that play­ing with her child, PJ, ​“is more than enough for us,” spar­ing Ms. Brown from shame and enabling her to become self-sup­port­ing. These are both char­ac­ter­is­tics of dig­ni­fied giving.

While includ­ing a diverse range of char­ac­ters has become typ­i­cal of many Jew­ish-themed children’s books, Michel­son and Cepe­da have cho­sen to both acknowl­edge this norm and to vary their approach. Many of Moses’s neigh­bors, as well as mem­bers of his own fam­i­ly, present as peo­ple of col­or, and some are also Jew­ish. On Rosh Hashanah, Moses’s moth­er warm­ly wel­comes her son’s best friend, Noah, whose father’s recent loss of a job means their fam­i­ly can bare­ly pay their rent. There will be more than enough apples and hon­ey for every­one to share. 

On Christ­mas, Moses and his fam­i­ly vol­un­teer at a com­mu­ni­ty kitchen, ensur­ing that finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties will not be an obsta­cle to any­one cel­e­brat­ing their hol­i­day. The mat­ter-of-fact speech pat­terns of Michelson’s char­ac­ters could be root­ed in dif­fer­ent cul­tures, but their words all add up to gen­eros­i­ty. Moses’s father, Pops, gen­tly reminds the Christ­mas guests that, even though their meal is plen­ti­ful, car­ing needs to be an ongo­ing process: ​“Too many folks are liv­ing out on the street. They need jobs to help make ends meet.” Mai­monides would def­i­nite­ly agree.